MOSCOW, July 26. /TASS/. Russian Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev and Turkish Minister of the Economy Nihat Zeybekci meet in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss bilateral economic relations, the press service of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development and Trade said.
This will be the first meeting of the two countries’ economics ministers since last November when Russian-Turkish relations made a tailspin after an incident, in which the Turkish Air Force brought down a Russian bomber in the skies over Syria close to the Syrian-Turkish border.
The list of issues the ministers hope to discuss on Tuesday is still unknown but Alexei Ulyukayev has already told reporters tourism and the lifting of restrictions on the supplies of Turkish foodstuffs are included.
"That’s the possible spectrum of problems (to come under discussion - TASS) but we didn’t make any arrangement on an exact agenda in advance and it’ll be arranged as we move on," he said.
Ulyukayev did not rule out a situation where the Turkish side might raise the issue of unbanning the supplies of agricultural produce.
"It’s impossible to say exactly now because we don’t have either an agenda or a programme and we haven’t spoken to each other for quite some time," he said. "That’s why this will be the first such contact and we’ll decide on the agenda."
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"We have certain area like commodity and service trading, road haulage, the use of Turkish workforce in Russia, chartered flights, and development of tourism on the whole," Ulyukayev said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the sides may return to the discussion of a joint investment fund, he said, adding: "We began to work through a possible preferential agreement on liberalization of services and investment and a fund for reciprocal investing," he said.
"We began this work more than a year ago but shelved it later owing to the commonly known reasons," Ulyukayev said.
Relations between Russia and Turkey deteriorated sharply after November 24, 2015, when the Turkish Air Force shot down the Sukhoi-24 bomber. Turkey claimed the warplane had intruded into its airspace.